There was Nothing They Could Do
by islashlove
Summary: It's been three years since Shawn had punched Lassiter that day in the bullpen. Lassiter thought that they had been happy for those three years, that they had gotten the old Shawn back. But how many people had to lose their lives before they had realised how wrong they had been. This is a slash and main character's death story.
1. Shawn had to Die

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything that is from Psych**

**Beta: Yes, I would like to say thank you to my Beta jerseybelle**

**Warning: This is a slash story. A main character's death. There is graphic description of torture, blood and gore and an evil Shawn. If you don't like these types of stories, please don't read. **

**Author's Notes: This story has been done for a word challenge on FanFiction .net Writers Unite. The word is 'Embrace'. **

**This is also the sequel to my story, "Who Do You Think You Are!". **

**Story Notes: It's been three years since Shawn had punched Lassiter that day in the bullpen. Lassiter thought that they had been happy for those three years, that they had gotten the old Shawn back. But how many people had to lose their lives before they had realised how wrong they had been.**

**There was Nothing They Could Do**

**Chapter 1: Shawn had to Die**

Detective Lassiter sat quietly on the hard wooden chair. His back was straight and rigid, shoulders square, legs together with feet slightly under the chair and as for his head, well...his head was just as rigid as the rest of his body. He just sat there, staring out into space and although his body was in the room, his mind was miles away, lost in the past.

"Freeze, this is the police!" Lassiter called out, his gun drawn and pointing at the man whose back was towards him.

They had been chasing this serial killer for months and he wasn't going to let him get away now. At least the man obeyed his command and stopped whatever he was doing, but what happened next will stay with Lassiter for the rest of his life.

As the man turned around, Lassiter could see behind him, a lifeless body that was tied to a chair. The man was naked and his body was covered in cuts. Some were fresh, others could have been days, even weeks, old. Which would work out right for how long they've known this man had been missing. But it wasn't the sight of the victim that got to Lassiter. It was who the perp was.

As the perp finished turning, Lassiter was greeted with a smile he knew well. At least one he thought he knew, but this one was twisted, full of smugness. "Lassie." Lassiter felt sick as his name slipped past that smile.

"Shawn? No, not you!" He couldn't believe it. Standing there, in front of the tortured body, was the man he loved.

Tightening his grip on his gun, Lassiter shook his head in hopes the scene before him would change, but it didn't. Instead, Shawn just tilted his head to the side and the grin grew even bigger as if he was enjoying Lassiter's discomfort. Lassiter swallowed hard and shifted his gun slightly when he noticed the knife in Shawn's hand. This seemed to make Shawn's eyes shine with glee and as if he knew what Lassiter was thinking, he too looked down at the knife in his hand. When Shawn looked back up at Lassiter, his eyes were now shining with laughter.

"This is your fault, Carlton. You do know that, right?"

_'God,'_ Lassiter thought to himself. _'It sounds just like him, but at the same time it doesn't sound like him at all.'_ "What do you mean, my fault?" Lassiter could hear that his own voice was shaking.

"What do I mean? What I mean, Lassie dear, is that I told you to kill me. To stop me before I became this person that now stands before you, but no, you knew best. You thought you could fix the damage that had been done. But you couldn't. You couldn't stop that which had already started.

He knew that this is who I was supposed to be. As a child. As an adult. He knew and he opened a world of pure pleasure for me. I use to fight this, but now...now I embrace it. I like the feel of the knife in my hand. I like how it feels as it slices across the flesh and I like hearing the muffled screams. Seeing the fear in their eyes and I love the way it makes me feel as I take their lives. As I push the knife slowly into their hearts. I can feel it beating through the knife itself. Getting slower and slower until it moves no more. But all their deaths are on you, because you couldn't let me go. You couldn't kill me when I begged you to."

"No, you had a choice. You could have sought help."

"I could have, but didn't and I don't want help. I like how I am and I don't want to stop. I'm having too much fun, but now, I'm sorry Lassie, but I'm going to have to kill you! I've been waiting for this day. I knew it would come. I knew that you would stop loving me and now that day has arrived."

Out of the corner of his eye, Lassiter saw Shawn raise the hand with the knife and then Shawn started to move towards him.

Backing away, Lassiter commanded. "Shawn, stop! Please stop, I don't want to have to shoot you."

The smile on Shawn's face told him that Shawn didn't believe him. "Really, Lassie! You are going to shoot me? I very much doubt it. You couldn't do it before when I wanted you to do it and you can't do it now."

"I'm warning you, stop moving and drop the knife!"

Shawn took one more step forward, never taking his eyes off Lassiter's. Then, it all suddenly slowed down.

In one smooth and quick movement, Shawn reached out with the knife, cutting Lassiter on the wrist. In that same moment Lassiter's gun went off. Even as he looked down to where the bullet had hit him and at the blood pouring out, Shawn never stopped smiling. As Lassiter watched Shawn's body fall to the floor, he pulled his injured wrist close to his chest.

The knife Shawn was holding fell from his grasp, hitting the ground with a soft clunk and somewhere in the distance, Lassiter could hear running, shouting and footsteps.

As Shawn's body hit the floor with a soft thud, everything started to speed back up to normal. Lassiter's ears started ringing from the noise the gun made being fired in an enclosed space. The voices and footsteps were closer and then O'Hara had appeared in his line of sight.

Moving carefully, she approached Shawn's lifeless body, gun at the ready and kicked the knife away from the body. Once she was sure that Shawn was no more a danger to them, she crouched down and placed two fingers to Shawn's neck. When she looked back at Lassiter he knew that Shawn was dead.

He didn't know what was worse, the fact that the man he loved was a cold-blooded killer or that Shawn was dead or the mixture of shock, sadness and guilt that was on O'Hara's face.

Somewhere behind O'Hara, Lassiter could hear McNab saying that the victim was also deceased, but he didn't care. In that split second, his world had been destroyed. He was in too much shock to really understand what was going on. All he could do was hold his injured arm and stare blankly at O'Hara as she called out to him.

"Detective Lassiter." He knew O'Hara was talking. He could see it, but it was a man's voice that was coming out.

"Detective," again, O'Hara spoke, but this time it was accompanied by a hand being placed on his shoulder.

Turning his head, Lassiter saw the doctor standing there, concern etched on his face. Lassiter now remembered that he is sitting in the doctor's waiting room. Looking down, he saw that he was gripping his arm, the one Shawn had sliced, close to his chest.

"Detective, are you...ready?"

Lassiter knew that the doctor was choosing his words, but he didn't care. In fact, he didn't care about anything anymore.

"Yes, Doctor, I'm ready." And with that the doctor gently led Lassiter into his office and closed the door.

**Thank you for reading and for reviewing my story.**


	2. Three Years Earlier

**Chapter 2: Three Years Earlier**

It had been weeks since Shawn returned to work. Not that there was much for him to do, as the crime rate seemed to be down, but everyone enjoyed having the old Shawn back. Just seeing the psychic lifted the spirits of the station and better still, Detective Lassiter was a lot calmer and easier to work around.

It was on one of these quiet days that Shawn and Gus arrived bearing gifts of cakes, doughnuts and coffee. While everyone ate, Shawn slipped down to the morgue to see Woody.

"Woody, I come bearing sweet gifts," Shawn called out when he saw that the morgue was empty. But smiled when Woody walked out of one of the other rooms.

"Shawn, good to see you."

Walking over to Woody's desk, Shawn put down a plate of food and a cup of coffee. He watched as the older man's eyes widened with glee at the sight of the sticky, sweet food. Shawn watched with extra interest as Woody's hand hovered over the items for a second before he picked up a yellow glazed doughnut. He was just about to put it in his mouth, when Shawn let out a small chuckle.

Woody looked over to his old friend to see what was funny, only to freeze at the smile and glare that was aimed at him. It wasn't Shawn's normal smile. It was more like the spider that was about to suck out the guts of the fly in its web. Swallowing, Woody put the doughnut back down.

"Something wrong with the food, Woody?" Shawn smirked. Woody swallowed hard as he watched the grin on Shawn's face grow wider.

"No, but ..."

"Tell me again, Woody. What did you say to Lassie about me?" Shawn's voice was cold and harsh. He was still smiling, but the smile in Shawn's eyes was gone, replaced by an equally cold glare. A glare that made Woody shiver.

"What do you mean?"

"What. Did. You. Tell. Him?" Shawn snarled through gritted teeth as he leaned closer to Woody's face.

"Only the truth. I told him that you loved him and that he needed to accept it and man up about his own feelings about you."

Without taking his eyes off Woody, Shawn stretched his neck one way and then the other. The sound of Shawn's bones cracking echoed around the normally quiet morgue. "The truth! Only the truth, you say. Well Lassie says differently. Lassie has told me that you told him about my past, about my exes."

"Now look here, Shawn. We were all worried about you. What did you expect me to do? We were losing you and I didn't want to lose you. You're a good friend, Shawn and ..."

"And nothing!" Shawn spat. "You didn't win. Lassie...didn't win. You still lost me. At least the old me. But it doesn't matter," Shawn continued as he started to walk around the morgue, picking up things as he went. Finally, he stopped in front of the latest body lying on the slab. Picking up a scalpel, Shawn focused on the blade. "I like the new me and that is the most important thing, right? That I like who I am."

"Of course it is. That you like who you are. It's very important." Woody said as he watched Shawn smile at the blade as he moved to the other side of the body.

"Good! It's also very important to me that I can trust you." Shawn eyes swiftly move away from the blade and into Woody's eyes. "I can trust you, can't I, Woody?"

"Yes! Completely! You can trust me with anything, any time."

The smile that Woody knew and loved returned to Shawn's face, so he let out a sigh of relief and lent slightly on the body between them. But that sigh quickly changed to an anguish cry of pain as Shawn grabbed one of Woody's hands, pressing the blade of the scalpel deep into his flesh.

"Are you sure about that?"

"Shawn! Please...you're hurting me." This only made Shawn press the blade even deeper. "YES! Yes, you can trust me."

"Good, we wouldn't want to see you have some sort of accident, now would we?"

"No!" Woody gasped through gritted teeth.

"Shawn, there you are," Lassiter said as he entered the morgue.

Woody watched as the cold look and feeling that was there only a second ago, disappeared and was replaced by the warm, loving Shawn they were all so fond of. The pain eased in his hand as the blade was removed and put down beside the body. To prove to Shawn he could be trusted, Woody quickly hid his bleeding hand in his pocket. For this, he received an approving nod from Shawn.

"Lassie, missed me?" Shawn then said as he skipped over to the clueless detective.

"I was wondering where you disappeared to after bringing all that food."

I brought some down to my friend, Woody. He always misses out. Don't you?"

"If you say so. Now, off you two go, so I can finish off this autopsy."

"Ok, and don't forget to eat the sweets that I brought especially for you."

Woody looked over to the plate sitting on his desk and then back at the man that brought them to him. "I won't and think you for thinking about me, Shawn."

"Come on, Shawn. One of the reasons I came looking for you is, a body just washed up on the beach."

"Cool, a case. About time. I was getting bored and was about to start to have some fun just to kill time. See you later, Woody."

Woody didn't answer Shawn. Instead, he just waited for them to leave so he could go and clean up his injured hand. The cut was deep and he needed stitches, but that wasn't what was bothering him the most. It was how Shawn changed so quickly. One minute he was his happy-go-lucky self and the next minute he was so cold and calculating that he didn't even flinch when he was hurting him. But even that didn't worry him the most. What did worry him the most was the fact that Shawn himself admitted that they had failed to save him and that the Shawn they all love, is truly gone.

**Thank you for reading and for reviewing my story.**


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